The three reasons Rocksmith fails as a way to learn guitar

Rocksmith wants you to have fun learning to play the guitar, and it does much …

Rocksmith is an interesting experiment in mixing rhythm games with instructing players how to play an actual guitar. The first code we were able to test looked good, but it was clear that the game needed to be cleaned up before launch. Now that you can buy the retail experience for the Xbox 360, PS3, or PC, it's time to see how much progress has been made. You will need your own working guitar—the game's special cable will work with any six-string—and once you have that, it's off to the races.

This is a product that had a ton of promise, but unfortunately the execution fails in more ways than it succeeds. There are many things that were disappointing, from the lackluster presentation to the lack of an included, printed manual, but here are the three deal breakers that ruined what could have been a fun way to learn to play the guitar.

There is lag

Rocksmith's hardware is simple: a cable that plugs into your guitar on one end and your console on the other. Any guitar will work, and it's simple to set up. The problem is the lag that is introduced when you try to play along with the songs. I played on an Xbox 360 connected to a high definition display via HDMI cable. I imagine that this is how most of you will play as well: a console connected to a nice display via HDMI. As the printed insert helpfully points out, this is the worst way to play and introduces the most lag between playing the guitar and hearing the results.

The best way to minimize lag? Connect your 360 to your home theater or stereo for audio via your console's Audio Adaptor Cable, and then use the HDMI cable for video. This may be how you're already gaming, but I doubt it. For the rest of us, the choice is between rewiring our system or living with the distracting timing.

It's possible to play with any setup, but if you're used to the responsiveness of either Rock Band or playing a real guitar, expect disappointment.

There is no way to select your difficulty

The game is very proud of the dynamic difficulty feature of each song, and it's a neat trick: as you play each song the game takes notes on how well you do, and then dials the difficulty of each section up or down. So if you nail the chorus but blow the solo, it will make the chorus harder while dropping notes from the solo until you catch up. It's neat, in theory. I did find myself learning a few actual solos, and that's an area of playing that usually causes me to struggle. This feature is not a complete failure.

Rocksmith trailer

The problem is you can't tell the game how you'd like to play, so it becomes drudgery. Why can't I try to play the real song the first time if I so choose? I wanted to shake the game and tell it I have played songs on an actual guitar in a real club in front of an audience. It would be fun to be able to jump in and play the songs I know how to play with the virtual backing band and really get into it, but the game forces you to start at one level and then through repetition teach the game your level of skill.

Remember how good it felt when you were able to play Guitar Hero on hard consistently? Or when you played a song perfectly all the way through? Rocksmith's dynamic difficulty means you're chasing goalposts that are always moving, up until the point where you can play the song perfectly every time. Until you put the hours and hours into proving you know the song, it's going to make the parts you struggle with easier and the parts you are proficient in harder. It never feels like you're getting anywhere, and this turns the game into a treadmill where it's impossible to find a good pace.

You can learn songs this way, but it's no fun, and you have to show the game monk-like patience as it sets the pace for you. I felt strangled as I played many of the songs, and I never felt that way while playing the lessons in Rock Band 3 or using the Pro Guitar. A real teacher will also be able to adapt to your playing style. Rocksmith tries to juggle being a game and a learning tool, and this causes it to stumble as both.

Unlocks? Why?

There is no better feeling than getting a new guitar, amplifier, or effects pedal and tripping out on the world of possibilities that have been opened to you. Twisting the knobs, messing with tones, figuring out the limits of what you can and can't do—playing music is all about exploration and finding your own path. Rocksmith locks you down by keeping so much of its content under wraps when you first begin to play. You have to prove you can play the songs at a certain level before you can move forward, and you have to work to unlock most of the content the game offers.

This is what happens when you try to walk the line between making a game and making something that will help people learn a skill. You either get the strengths of both, or you double-down on the weakness. The progression system of Rocksmith keeps so much of the good stuff away from you at the beginning, while locking you down to the game's laborious, linear pacing. There is a lot to like here, but I wish more of it had been laid out in front of me to play with and explore, instead of little rewards being doled out arbitrarily. The game has one way it wants you to play it, and you can't deviate. There may be gamers out there who don't mind being told how to play and what you can play at first, but I'm not one of them, and it feels like it goes against the nature of what it should feel like to pick up a new instrument.

It's not a terrible game

The lessons and minigames that are included will teach you some guitar skills, and the way the progression system rewards good playing while helping you improve is solid, but there are too many ways in which the game trips over itself. There are simply too many frustrations and miscalculations made in the game's presentation, interface, and progression system to keep the interest of very new, or even moderately talented, guitarists.

You can rewire your gaming system to decrease the lag, but the rest of the problems won't be so easy to fix. This idea has promise, and we think a sequel could go a long way to making something like this work, but as of right now Rocksmith isn't worth your time or money.